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10 videos · 4 h 35 min
Explainer · YouTube
Quanta Magazine
Quanta's ten-minute primer opens by insisting that quantum computers are not the next generation of supercomputers but something else entirely, then lays out the physics they run on. Watch it with one question in mind: where does the speed-up actually come from? Part 5 of the lesson gives the full answer, and it is interference, not parallel guessing.
Explainer · YouTube
3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson treats a quantum state as a vector, gates as rotations, and Grover's search as a sequence of reflections, and confronts the 'tries every answer at once' myth directly. Best watched after Part 6; the rotation picture there is exactly the geometry behind the square-root speed-up.
Explainer · YouTube
Josh's Channel
An eight-minute explainer that starts from classical bits, introduces the Hadamard gate (1:20), asks what happens when you measure between two H gates (4:25), then recasts every gate as a rotation of the Bloch sphere (5:43). Watch the 4:25 segment beside this section's H-then-H calculation: it is where interference between the two Hadamards meets measurement.
Explainer · YouTube
Michael Nielsen
Ten minutes on the controlled-NOT gate from Michael Nielsen, co-author with Isaac Chuang of the field's standard textbook, taken from his series 'Quantum computing for the determined'. Afterwards, build this section's Bell state yourself: H on the control, then CNOT.
Explainer · YouTube
Domain of Science
Dominic Walliman's quick tour of five common errors opens at 0:30 with the 'parallel computing' myth this section takes apart. It then previews the rest of the lesson: logical versus physical qubits (1:28), encryption (3:10), noise (4:05) and quantum supremacy (5:03). It dates from 2018, so its supremacy segment comes before Google's 2019 claim and the Willow results of Part 8.
Explainer · YouTube
Domain of Science
Starts at the 24:59 chapter, 'Obstacles to Building a Quantum Computer', the problem this section opens with. Then comes 'What Real Quantum Computers Are Made From' (27:24), Dominic Walliman's beginner-level tour of the competing hardware, to set beside this section's five families. It dates from 2022, so trust the section's newer figures; the first 24 minutes are a map of the whole field if you want more.
Lecture · Perimeter
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Shohini Ghose · 2020
Physicist Shohini Ghose of Wilfrid Laurier University surveys the quantum technologies that grow out of superposition and entanglement, from quantum computers to secure communication. A clear public lecture given at Perimeter Institute in March 2020.
Lecture · Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize · John Clarke · 2025
"From SLUGs to macroscopic quantum phenomena": John Clarke on the 1984–85 Berkeley experiments in which an entire superconducting circuit, big enough to hold in your hand, tunnelled out of a trapped state as a single quantum object.
Lecture · Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize · Michel H. Devoret · 2025
"From macroscopic quantum phenomena to artificial atoms": Michel Devoret on how a circuit's quantized energy levels — measured in the same experiments — became the foundation of today's superconducting qubits.
Lecture · Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize · John M. Martinis · 2025
"Prehistoric Superconducting Qubits": John Martinis, who later led Google's quantum-hardware team, traces the line from the 1980s tunnelling experiments to the superconducting qubit.